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17.9.17

Planning our Dream Kitchen | Kitchen Diaries

We have lived in our house for 4 years now. The first room we changed was the lounge as it was going to be a focal point of our home and it was horrendously dated. We then did Pickles room when we found out he was coming along and we also did the garden as it was all paving slabs and we wanted a proper garden with grass for Pickle to run around on. The most recent room we have renovated was our bathroom which we did last year. When I say we I actually mean hubby, his step Dad and our friends who are all amazing and so helpful! I just helped plan all of the renovations, picked colours schemes and then spent the actual renovation process trying not to have a total melt down about the amount of dust that fills the house.

This years project is the kitchen. The kitchen is last room in the house (bar mine and hubbys room which just needs a lick of paint) that we have left to do. The kitchen we have at the moment is dated, broken and generally not nice and seeing as it is the first room that you walk into when you come into our house I couldn't wait to start planning something that I was going to love and feel proud of. I wanted to document the whole kitchen process on here as I think it will be something that will hopefully help others who are thinking of starting a task as huge as this and also it will be nice for us to look back on.

The first step for us was planning the lay out and design of the kitchen. We knew that our main priority with the new kitchen was to maximise storage. The rest of the design elements we were pretty flexible about but we knew we wanted as much storage as possible. Luckily, IKEA (where we brought and designed our kitchen) has a whole host of amazing storage ideas that helped us achieve our main goal. We headed into store last month with all of our measurements and spent a couple of

hours with an amazing guy named Gary who helped us design our dream kitchen. Once we had designed the layout we then picked our doors and worktops and we had the start of our dream kitchen. Then it was over to us to do my favourite thing...find all of the additional bits that really bring the room together.

My first thought was flooring. Flooring has such a massive impact on a room and I only had a few specifications that I needed the floor to meet. I wanted a floor that was dark coloured to hide the dirt (I have a toddler!! Don't judge me!!) and I wanted a floor that was going to be durable and hardwearing as it would get a lot of traffic. After searching around I found a brand called Quick Step Flooring. A couple of people that we know in the trade had heard of them and said they were great so I checked them out. They have a HUGE range of flooring to choose from. There wasn't just a huge choice of colours and styles there was also the choice of if we were going to go with hardwood, Vinyl, Laminate...SO MANY CHOICES! We ended up picking a gorgeous slate grey Livyn. This flooring is a waterproof, has a 20 year warranty and has a stain and scratch guard technology. Delivery was super quick and I can't wait for it to be down as I really do think it's going to look amazing!!

Next thing Hubby and I needed to decided on was a sink and tap. We currently have a stainless steel sink and tap and it always reminds me of a church hall kitchen. Before we started looking I knew that I wanted a ceramic sink as, to me, they feel so much more luxurious, look cleaner and can really bring a kitchen together in my opinion. We found our perfect sink at Franke. I seriously never thought I would be so excited about a sink but it I really am! We also found a beautiful tap at Franke too. We went from a classic looking tap that wouldn't date and would compliment the traditional and streamlined sink that we went for.

On the list next was lights. For the lights we knew that we wanted spotlights and we found some perfect and really affordable ones from Dusk lighting. We also needed to sort paint. This was a difficult one because we didn't really know what we wanted. We headed off to B&Q and had a look around the HUGE amount of paints that were available. The Valspa range had the best colour selection and we both really liked a green colour from their range which is what we went for.

So that was it. The kitchen was planned and ready to be delivered and started...then the real fun would begin!!

Make sure you keep an eye out for the next addition of our kitchen diaries to see how the renovations gets on...

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Through Ami's Eyes is written by Ami Roberts. Living in the South of Essex, Ami writes about all aspects of her life including her experiences as a first time Mum to her little Pickle, lifestyle and beauty tips as well as travel and product reviews. READ MORE